


I, Your Glass

by sarahworm



Series: Halflings Born and Made [2]
Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Schneewittchen | Snow White (Fairy Tale)
Genre: A prequel to my other fairy tale story but you could read it separately, F/F, literally why does ao3 hate indents someone help me, rated T only because it's sad I'm not good at ratings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 20:52:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19158769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahworm/pseuds/sarahworm
Summary: Once upon a time, a witch was drawn to a castle on the edge of a forest by a woman who would be queen. And though she was happy to begin with, there was a story encroaching which couldn't have happened any other way.





	I, Your Glass

“And since you know you cannot see yourself

So well as by reflection, I, your glass

Will modestly discover to yourself

That of yourself which you yet know not of.”

\- _Julius Caesar_ Act I Scene ii

 

“’It’s not like you to take a halfling,’ Tamarack said. ‘You haven’t bothered with humans since that stunt with the mirror.’”

-And the Universe Lies Upon Your Mouth, Chapter 3

 

                After she had gone, those who had known her could never quite say when the Lady Ash had arrived at the court. And the rare few who could remember that she had walked in out of the snow one clear night could not have told you how long it was before she became a permanent fixture on the arm of the Lady Avys.

                Those who had known her face and her voice could have told you, later, that she was quiet and polite, beloved of the lady-turned-Queen; kind to most but generally seen as unapproachable. They could have said that she was whispered to contain some small magic, some knowledge of the old ways. Not unheard of, in those days. After all, rumors still lingered in the castle corners about the late Queen and her growing daughter.

                But no one ever asked. The story that unfolded after Ash vanished was caught up with the blood red of hearts desired and won, with the blinding flash of a magic mirror, with the dark treachery of poison. One queen had died, another was felled, and a third lived, and in these stories the quiet, dangerous woman who had once resided in the thick of it was forgotten.

***

                Two women napped in the shadow of the castle on a bright spring day. It was about 3 o’clock in the afternoon, and they’d been outside since mid-morning, having spread a woven blanket on the ground and eaten a picnic lunch Avys had charmed out of the kitchen staff.

                Ash had her head pillowed on Avys’ stomach, letting the sun play across her closed eyelids. Her hair was a shining auburn, and it clashed with the red of Avys’ gown.

                Avys blinked her eyes open and gazed up at the sky. Then she stretched out her arms and flexed her feet, yawning. Ash stirred and Avys nudged her shoulder. “Show me something,” she said. Her tone was light, almost teasing, but there was no hint of a question anywhere.

                This was a request Ash was accustomed to, during their long days together. One she’d encouraged, really, the first time she’d shown Avys magic, weaving a gold chain for her neck out of thin air. Now she held her hands up toward the sky, circling her fingers together around the clear sun. Closing one eye, she exhaled, and a translucent bubble formed in the open space between her hands. Sitting up, she smoothed her fingers over it delicately. It weighed almost nothing, but shone with a brilliant yellow light like a miniature version of the sun itself.

                Ash handed the globe to Avys, who was leaning forward on her elbow. It was so light that she could balance it in one hand.

                “What does it do?” Avys asked.

                Ash shrugged one shoulder. Her typical response when Avys asked about any of the amusements she performed for her. “It’s just a reflection, sort of. It will fade in an hour or so. Sooner if there’s a cloud.”

                Avys tilted the bubble back and forth in her hand. Ash watched her as she played with it, the light spilling over her companion’s dark waves and amber eyes and carefree smile, something deeper written across her own face.

***

                Ash was still young, in those days. Comparatively speaking. Tamarack was already older than most trees, Linden just barely formed, and Ash was itching in skin that felt constantly in flux. She’d taken to wandering, hoping that somewhere she would find a place where the ground called out for a caretaker, or where she felt at ease enough to put down her own roots.

                What she found instead was a castle. Braced with a sunlit meadow on one side and brushed by an unruly woods on the other, it felt as unsettled as she did, uncomfortable with its own heft. When she’d first approached it in the dead of winter, it stirred her curiosity. The castle was nominally quiet – very few people coming and going, the inhabitants preferring to seal themselves up inside the walls – but to Ash, the whole place hummed. And yet, when she pressed a hand to the stone, it was undisturbed; no witch had meddled with the building itself. So of course Ash was drawn to this place, with its oddly reticent residents and its air of untethered magic.

                It was ten days she’d lived there before she came face to face with Snow. The child had careened around one of the castle’s many corners, nearly colliding with Ash and Avys, who had coquettishly offered to take the new visitor on a second tour of whole place, to get a better bearing on it. Ash put a hand out to steady the girl, who dipped her eyes and begged pardon, only a little clumsily. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen, Ash figured, peering at Snow’s pale, dimpled cheeks and mass of black hair.

                The girl dashed off again, and Ash watched her go. “That child is blessed,” she said wonderingly, almost unaware she was speaking aloud.

                Avys snorted. “So everyone says. I don’t see the appeal, myself.”

                Ash tore her eyes away from the now-empty hallway and back to her new friend’s face. “No,” she said, “she’s been witch-marked. True blessings are rare things. Who?”

                Avys laughed. “You _are_ strange! I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. But tell me more.”

                In the following hours, she would explain to Avys that she’d never before seen someone touched with a gift without a price – a true blessing, not a curse – and that whatever Snow had been given didn’t even _do_ anything, except maybe exude a general sort of goodwill. It was to clear the cloud that formed on Avys’ face that Ash began sharing what Avys called magic tricks and Ash thought of as simply trifles.

                Many days after that, she heard from another member of the court the story of the Princess Snow’s late mother, and the bargain she was said to have made for her daughter’s beauty. When she asked Avys about this, her countenance had darkened so considerably that Ash had never mentioned it again.

                Years later, Ash would wonder if, had she told Avys the truth about why she had been so drawn to her in the first place – that while Snow might have been responsible for the wild magic swirling about the castle grounds, Avys drew it towards herself, the motes of magic at home in her hair and clothes and pulled along in her wake – it would have made any difference.

***

                The seasons turned toward summer, and Ash stayed. Avys asked her jokingly once if she’d glamoured the castle’s residents into accepting her, a stranger with no heritage or title to her name, and she’d shaken her head. “No,” she said, “sometimes I think this castle is only just this side of a dream. It’s easy to make yourself a place, here. Besides” and she bumped her hip into Avys’ side, for they were sprawled across the fine brocade of Avys’ bedclothes, “you’d provide fine cover to anyone who chose.”

                “Oh, so I’m being used, is that it?” But her voice was a touch heavier than usual. Ash twitch a finger and two strands of Avys’ hair lifted up and began tickling her nose. One of Ash’s favorite tricks to make her laugh.

                Avys nudged them away. “I’m going to get him to marry me,” she said, finally.

                “Who?” Ash asked, knowing the answer.

                “I’m going to be queen,” Avys said, not looking at Ash. “Can you make me irresistible, so everyone will love me?”

                “You assume you’re not already.”

                “I’m not joking, Ash,” Avys said sharply.

                “I wasn’t, either.”

                She wasn’t made to be encased in stone walls, was Ash. She’d known that when she came to the castle, and she’d surrendered to it anyway, given herself over to the allure of Avys’ soft lips and the power she pulled along in her wake. So Ash drank in the stale castle air and buried herself beneath its peaked roof.

                But she reclaimed some of it for herself, too. She found the quietest corner in the dungeon, and with a simple charm hit it from sight. And on lazy afternoons she crept out to the forest under the soft sun, returning with dirt gathered in her skirts and herbs woven into her hair. She planted them in earthen pots stolen from the kitchen and nurtured them with scraps of magic. And in this way, Ash created herself a sanctuary.

                Avys wasn’t the first person to have asked Ash for a love charm, and she wouldn’t be the last. Usually, the way you did one involved some reconnaissance, crafting the potion to amplify whatever the object of the spell was most attracted to. The sort of information people wore on their sleeve – it never took much effort for Ash to get it out of them.

                But she didn’t want to that this time. She wasn’t here for the king and she didn’t want to spend any time getting close to him. She told herself it was all in the interest of maintaining a low profile.

                Into Avys’ lovespell, then, Ash added a glimmer for every one of Avys’ attributes she could think of. Her skin would glow more brightly, the wit in her eyes would sparkle even more; not a single hair on her perfect head would be out of place. They would see her like Ash saw her, and she would be radiant.

                The charm worked like charms do, of course. When questioned later, Ash might have demurred that Avys had a natural charisma to ensnare whomever she liked, and that was probably true. But when Avys and the king announced their engagement, Ash sealed off her herbal room. Not with a bloodguard or an illusion, but a regular lock. She stuck the key away in her room and tried not to think about it.

***

                Ash spoke to Snow for the second time in the days after the engagement was announced. She was walking the halls of the castle, alone for once, when she came upon the girl, folded up in a windowsill, forehead pressed against the glass.

                One part of Ash held disdain for the child out of pure loyalty to Avys. But the blessing shining upon her drew Ash. And she felt common human sympathy when she saw that Snow was crying. She had a heart, after all.

                Ash tucked herself up next to the princess. “Now, what’s wrong?” she asked, humming a soothing word into her hand and placing it on Snow’s back.

                Snow let out a great gasping sob and suddenly wriggled her way onto Ash’s lap. Ash, confronted with hands around her shoulders and a wet face pressed into her collar, could only pat her and make calming noises.

                After a minute, Snow let out a breath that was shaky but unbroken by tears. “Sorry,” she muttered, looking past Ash’s neck still. “You seem nice.”

                “I’m sure it’s hard with your father getting remarried,” Ash said. “It’s alright. You can stay here for a minute.” Truthfully, she enjoyed the girl’s warm weight and the magic she spun out around her.

                “Yes,” Snow replied, “but mostly I just wish I’d known my mother.”

                Ash rocked back and forth a little. They sat in silence another moment.

                “Tell me about your mother,” Snow said. It wasn’t demanding, but it didn’t sound much like a question. Ash wondered if Snow was perhaps not in the habit of being denied. Or maybe she never had to ask for anything in the first place.

                Ash smoothed her hair. She only knew one story about that, and she didn’t think it was the kind of comfort Snow was seeking. But it was all she had. “I’ll tell you a story,” she said, finally.

                “Long ago, when the hills were young, there was a woman who loved the earth. She lived in the forest and tended to the trees and plants and creatures who shared her home. And she gathered magic to her, the magic that lived in the air then.” Ash faltered for a minute, thinking about Snow’s new stepmother. She cleared her throat and went on. “She gathered it in her hands like fallen leaves and it wove like garlands into her hair.

                “The woman was beloved of the north wind. She was wary of his attentions at first, unsure what someone who came and went so easily could give her. ‘Just give me your heart, and I’ll take care of it,’ he told her. And though she knew she shouldn’t, she loved how his breeze in her hair smelled of pine sap and ice. So she gave over her heart.

                “They were happy for a time, in the little grove where she lived. But winds are fickle things, and in due time he was gone, leaving only the woman’s swollen and sodden heart behind.

                “She took it up again, and swearing off all love but that she created herself, she left the grove where she’d been so happy and at peace. She began wandering the woods and fields. And wherever she found a place where she could find a sense of calm, if only for a moment, she broke off a piece of her heart and entrusted it to one of the trees she so loved. As far as I know, she’s walking still.”

                “That was a sad story,” Snow murmured, but she slid off of Ash’s lap and wiped her eyes. “Thank you.”

                Ash had never considered it a sad story, exactly. Just one that she’d been told over and over, one that she was born knowing.

                Snow took her leave, vanishing back into the castle. Ash leaned on the windowpane, caught up in her own memories. From the shadows, Avys watched, luminous and scowling.

***

Three days before the wedding, Avys and the king were in a luncheon with a series of counselors. While they were occupied, Ash slipped into her friend’s room and sealed the door with a press of her hand.

The wedding dress was hanging on the back of the wardrobe, glimmering like a swatch of moonlight. Ash looked at the delicate lace and rows of seed pearls on satin, and couldn’t resist flicking a good wish or two on the dress, making it glow all the brighter.

But that wasn’t why she had come. Turning away, she breathed on the index finger of her right hand until it shone a burnt orange. Carefully, she drew a sigil in the air, one with curves and a high arc. When it was complete, she saw that the air between the lines became crystalline, and with two hands she punched through it.

A moment later, she withdrew them and smudged the sigil out with her elbow; clutched in her hands was a small bat-like creature, with leathery wings, no eyes, and a gaping, open mouth.

Ash studied it for a minute, grimacing. Then she spoke in a steely and emotionless command. “I am going to nourish you. And in my blood, I give you all of my thought and foresight but none of my power. And in return, you serve as I wish.”

She tilted her neck and brought the demon to her throat.

As the mouth clamped on to the nexus between her neck and shoulder, Ash shuddered, but held still. The demon grew plumper and more solid as it fed, and after only several seconds she ripped it away, breathing hard.

Blood dripped from the demon’s mouth. Its skin gleamed with new life.

In one fluid motion, Ash shoved it into the mirror. The glass rippled and took it; for one moment, the surface bulged as the demon sank and was smothered, and in another moment the mirror was flat again and Ash was gazing at her own reflection. Her wedding present.

***

They got married in the height of summer, and in the beginning, nothing changed. Avys was busier, her eyes set on capturing the heart of every courtier in the castle, but she was queen, and no one could say anything if the queen had a perpetual shadow of a woman as a companion. And every once in a while, Ash would arrange it so they could escape unnoticed and steal an afternoon in the sun, just as they always had.

But as the apples ripened, and the leaves turned, and autumn came. It was inevitable, really, that it couldn’t last. Ash had to know that the life she’d made for herself was only half-formed, that even that twilight castle was affected by the movement of time.

And maybe she could have wrung some more weeks or months or years out of it, but in the end, the king fell sick.

He was bedridden quickly, and Avys fell somber, playing every part the worried wife, pacing outside his chambers and wringing her hands. She concerned herself so deeply with every physician and herbalist and soothsayer she could find that it was nearly a week before Ash could join her alone in her room.

Avys was pleading at the mirror when she entered, asking it over and over to show her a cure for her stricken husband. And Ash could tell that she’d been at this for days, because the mirror was only cycling through herbs and remedies that Avys had already passed on to her husband’s attendants. She’d exhausted everything it—well, Ash—knew.

Ash let herself in, eased the door closed, and placed a gentle pair of hands on Avys’ shoulders. Avys spun around, eyes blazing with desperation. “Tell me you can fix it, Ash!”

Ash could only offer her open palms. Avys fell into them, and Ash sat with her on her bed, holding her friend close. “I would if I could,” she muttered, “but I don’t have a cure for this, Avys, some things just happen.”

“Some _things_ just _happen_? You’re a witch! Nothing happens that you don’t let happen!”

“That’s not how it works. I don’t – I can’t heal him, I’m sorry.”

“Then what’s the use of you,” Avys muttered into her shoulder. There was a sob in her voice and Ash ached for her.

“He might not die,” she said. There was no response. “But even if, it’s nothing you can’t handle. Avys, just think about it. You married him, and you don’t lose that if he dies. It could be just me, and you, like it used to be, except you’re queen now. You’re queen now! You can do whatever you want.”

Avys went very still under Ash’s hands, and then she sprang up, and Ash recoiled at the look of terror and anger she saw in her face. For a moment neither of them spoke.

“You did it, didn’t you,” Avys spat.

“What? No!”

“You said you can’t heal him. Is it because you know why he’s dying? You poisoned him, didn’t you? Because you got jealous, because I was leaving you behind!”

Ash stared at her. She had never seen Avys so furious. “You’re wrong. I didn’t do anything to him.” She reached out a hand to take Avys by the arm, but Avys jumped back from her. “Listen, I might have been afraid we wouldn’t see each other as much, but I didn’t do anything. I’d heal him if I could.”

“You’re lying,” Avys hissed. She seized Ash by the shoulder and tried to shove her towards the door. “You liked it when I was just a woman and in thrall of your magic, but I have all this power now, and you couldn’t handle it. If he dies now, when we’ve only been married a couple months, you know what they’ll think? They’ll think I did it, and they’ll pass me over and give the crown straightway to that brat, and it’ll all have been for nothing. I finally got the power I wanted, the power I deserved, and you hated it, so you ruined _everything_.”

“Is that really what matters most to you? The power?”

Avys snorted. “What else matters?”

Ash couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You think I was jealous, you think I resented your _power_? I never cared about that!”

“I don’t believe you. You were this mysterious stranger, but now I’m the queen, and I’m the most beautiful one in the castle – the mirror said so—“

“Avys, that’s because _my heart is in the mirror_.” Ash finally lost her temper. “I gave you everything you wanted, I made him fall in love with you, I put all of my knowledge and all the truths that I know into that mirror for you, so I would be here even when I wasn’t, and all you care about is your own beauty? I loved you.”

Avys sneered. “If you really loved me, you would heal him. You would protect me.”

If Avys had been paying attention to anything but her own fury, she would have seen Ash’s eyes flash orange, just for an instant. And if Ash had been feeling anything but her own heart break, she would have seen the mirror behind her back splinter, ripple, and then reform.

“Do you know who I _am_?” Ash snarled, “do you know what it is, to be loved by someone like me? I would have given you world, but you’re selfish, and you can’t see beyond your own face. I loved you, but you’ve lost that now.”

For the first time, Avys’ sneer faltered. Ash turned to the door. “Good luck keeping your power after he dies,” she said as she left, “because there’s only one witch-blessed in this castle now, Avys, and it isn’t you.”

***

If few of the castle residents remembered when Ash had arrived, fewer still could recall when she left. In the days that followed, one or two might be heard to whisper to each other, wondering where the woman who always tailed their new queen had gone, but such small inquiries were soon forgotten as the story inside the castle grew darker.

Much later, when she heard of the twilight that had fallen over the castle and the things Avys had done, she turned away from the sister who’d told her, wiped at a tear, and moved on. Ash was nothing if not practiced, and in the years since, she had kept herself apart from humans and tried to teach herself how to control her feelings. She thought it couldn’t be a legacy if she didn’t claim it as her own.

After all, she left without saying another word to the girl who had so fascinated her, the girl who would soon capture all of her stepmother’s wrath. And she left without reclaiming her spells from the castle dungeon, or the queen’s mirror, or the skin of the woman who owned it. And when the mirror had broken, and the queen had died, and Snow had ascended without another thought to the witch she’d once met, Ash’s magic was left to sink into the bones of that place, the only lasting marker that she’d ever been there at all.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Snow White is my favorite for retellings so I had to give it my own try. 
> 
> Not sure if there will be any more stories in this universe but, well, maybe.


End file.
